Egyptiana Emporium-Tuesday Tomb – KV57

Another wonderfully written ‘Tuesday Tomb’ post by Egyptiana Emporium, this time on KV57, tomb of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Horemheb. He was the last in the line of the “Amarna Kings”, despite simply being an army general and not of royal blood. He succeeded Ay, who was the successor of Tutankhamun. The tomb really is fantastic!

KV57 is the tomb of the last pharaoh of the Amarna Period, Horemheb, located in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. It was discovered in 1908 by the English Egyptologist, Edward Ayrton, who was working for Theodore M. Davis, an American lawyer who funded excavations in the Valley of the Kings between 1902 and 1914.

The tomb is located on the valley floor, and when Ayrton made his discovery, he found a tomb filled with debris from the occasional flooding of the valley. The tomb had also been broken into in antiquity.

KV57 is notably different from the other royal tombs of the Amarna Period because the decoration is painted bas-relief rather than painted walls. The layout is also different, representing a transition from the bent axis plan, characteristic of the 18th Dynasty, to the straight axis plan, characteristic of the royal tombs of the 19th and 20th Dynasties.